Month: September 2017

With the chaotic mundanity of being a stay at home parent with twin toddlers the doesnt sleep enough, I decided a couple of months ago to try my hand at carving wood pendants.

In my previous pre-parent life, I carved stone sculptures, and for a tome had done antique furniture repair, so the skill set is similar enough.

A local jewelry maker was selling her inventory out and had a bunch of wood cut into little discs and I bought a handful for a couple bucks, and started experimenting with my dremel. The next thing I knew, I bought the rest (about 100 pieces) and was motoring away at them averaging 4 pendants a day.

So, what to do with all these little trinkets? I decide early on to maybe try to sell them on etsy or through farmers markets or craft stalls.

Great! A little micro business i can do from home that is a healthy outlet, that won’t take from other hobbies in the future.

Cue going non stop for 18 hours a day or more with the kids/house/life/carving for almost two months straight (A few days downtime carving for appointments and illness etc. ) and I have a tidy amount of stock. So I’m prepared to open am online store!

And here I sit.

After doing all that hard work, inspired to keep carving, etsy account made, postal information on hand, and all I need to do is take pictures, write a description for each piece, post, shamelessly share it and cross my fingers.. or maybe toes because hands are handy.

The great machine has stalled.

It’s not the first time either… And there’s no answer as to why I do this to myself, but this time I’m admitting and addressing the silliness that it is.

Is it that I don’t like doing fiddly things? I obviously can commit to a point, know full well this isn’t a career and it’s more just for enjoyment with maybe some extra coin on the side. Worst case all my lived ones get pendants for Christmas, and I still got to carve stuff instead of cleaning and cooking and rearing children.

It’s not like carving stops when I do the store thing, or it’s that much extra responsibility to mail stuff off to customers. So… why?

This is the conundrum of my day, if anyone reads this and has suggestions, I’m open to them 🙂